ideas

Staring out into the blackness, they couldn’t help notice how black it looked. Nothingness is black.

All visible light is absorbed, tucked away or drifting without any surface to reflect off. Leaving the gaps just black.

A deep, consuming, thick and sticky black. There was nothing there. Nothing among the stars. Just gaps. Terrifying gaps that seemed to make the animal inside curl up and hiss through bared fangs that had both form and colour. They weren’t nothingness. Out there was.

There was science that could explain it all but in the obliviousness of their thoughts they couldnt help think of ideas that weren’t possible.

Could other creatures see nothingness? Humans can only see a small span of the light that fills the universe, and they can see an even smaller span with it. It’s a little torch in the big woods and its night.

Could something else look into the night sky and see something they couldn’t? Was there a creature like that on Earth? Would it be out there in the nothingness? Would it ever exist?

Nothingness was black to them. What if it was a different colour to the creature that could see it? Would they see two different skies, so far apart that the sky they saw now would be more similar to Van Gogh’s than the real thing?

Did nothingness have a different colour? And was it still as terrifying or was is warm and welcoming? Was the creature scared too?

Like this:

She looked at the ceiling. It was a popcorn ceiling, decoration from a time past. Circles and swirls across the flat plain. It’s bumps created shadows. Formed images in the back of her mind, as her brain raced to make sense of what she was seeing. Trying to see meaning. The animal inside for her looked for threats, predators, tools and food. The basic mind was humming in the background like an old computers fan. The mechanic purr of survival instincts.

She’d emptied her mind as much as possible. Background noise still remained, filling the silence to make it comfortable and fathomable.

The idea was forming. In her mind just beyond the delicate touch of her finger tips. It danced away from her like dust in the sunlight. Swirling, spinning, bouncing away. Controlled by unseen forces that lived behind her eyes.

Gliding down only to fly up riding the currents of the electricity running through her brain. Playing a game with the universe around it as it drifted in and out of existence. Never taking physical form, never becoming nothing. A shadow that refused to stay still for a chalk line to be drawn around it. It couldn’t be mapped or shaped.

Her hands reached out trying to grab it but it just slipped. It was trying to grab water and stars. It was gritty and rubbed against her hands promising it’s existence. But did not allow itself to lower itself to take physical and mortal thought.

She wanted to pull on a string and unravel it. There were no loose ends to clutch to create a path to run down. No needle or thread to weave the idea. She’d have to wait for it, or watch it fade from the background.